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The Los Angeles Dodgers are in search of an answer at second base, and a report Friday revealed they have held discussions involving Texas Rangers utility man Jurickson Profar.

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Dodgers Exploring Profar Among Second Base Options

Friday, Jan. 20

According to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, L.A. is attempting to pry Brian Dozier away from the Minnesota Twins, but it has also looked into Profar as a fallback option.

Rosenthal characterized a Profar trade as unlikely, but he has yet to land a defined role with the Rangers.

The Curacao native was among the hottest prospects in baseball a few years ago as a second baseman, but injuries forced him to miss the 2014 and 2015 campaigns before he return to the majors in 2016.

Profar appeared in 90 games for Texas last season, hitting .239 with five home runs and 20 RBI.

The 23-year-old switch-hitter was utilized all over the field, as he appeared in at least 11 games each at third base, second base, first base, left field and shortstop.

While Profar is a useful commodity for the Rangers due to his flexibility, there doesn’t appear to be a regular spot available for him in the lineup for 2017.

He also becomes arbitration eligible starting in 2018, per Spotrac, which could increase Texas’ interest in trading him.

Injuries have held Profar back, and he has yet to come anywhere close to reaching his potential, but he is oozing with talent.

Trading him now may not be the smartest move from Texas’ perspective since his value is likely lower than ever, but that makes him an ideal target for a team in need of infield help, such as the Dodgers.

There’s what Madison Bumgarner is making, what he’s worth and how much he might make in his next contract.

Spoiler alert: These three things are very different.

What’s certain is the San Francisco Giants have gotten a lot more than they bargained for when they extended Bumgarner in April 2012. The left-hander’s contract guaranteed $35 million through 2017, with two club options in 2018 and 2019 worth at least $12 million and at most $16 million depending on his performance in Cy Young voting.

In five regular seasons since, this has paid for a 2.96 ERA across 1,072 innings. Bumgarner has further earned his cash by helping deliver World Series titles in 2012 and 2014. He won the latter championship almost single-handedly.

By Baseball-Reference.com’s version of wins above replacement, Bumgarner has only been the 11th-best pitcher in the league over the last five years. This is somewhere between hogwash and codswallop. He’s at worst a top-10 pitcher and more realistically a top-five pitcher.

Oh yeah, he’s still only 27.

It would be fun to speculate about what Bumgarner might earn on the open market in any offseason. But such a conversation is especially fun this offseason.

This is not only the winter he would have been a free agent had he not signed his extension but also a winter in which the demand for his services would’ve been elevated by the lack of other free-agent aces.

The total record payout for a free-agent starter is the $217 million David Price got from the Boston Red Sox last offseason. Bumgarner would have beaten that with room to spare, becoming easily the most expensive pitcher in history.

Of course, Bumgarner isn’t a free agent right now. There are thus only two ways he can land a contract more befitting of his talent: He can either ride three more healthy and productive years into free agency after 2019 or hope the Giants come calling with a second contract extension before then.

Not surprisingly, the Giants are very much interested in keeping him.

When the topic of Bumgarner’s future with the club was raised last October, Giants general manager Bobby Evans confirmed to Andrew Baggarly of the Bay Area News Group that preliminary conversations had taken place with Bumgarner’s representatives.

“When they’re interested in talking, we want to make sure we’re available,” Evans said. “But we don’t have a timeline. We want Madison to be here for a long time. At the right time, we’ll address this when his camp is ready to talk.”

In all likelihood, the right timeline for extending Bumgarner isn’t imminent.

The Giants are coming off their second straight year over the luxury tax threshold and are slated to be over the threshold again this year. The best time for them to extend Bumgarner would be after 2017, when they’re slated to have a fair amount of money come off their books.

Assuming his $21 million option for 2018 doesn’t vest, it’s a virtual lock the Giants will pay Matt Cain his $7.5 million buyout after 2017. Even more money would come loose if Johnny Cueto opts out of the final four years of his six-year, $130 million contract.

If Bumgarner and the Giants do indeed see a window after 2017, he’d be in a similar position age-wise to Stephen Strasburg when he signed his seven-year, $175 million extension with the Washington Nationals last May. That’s set to begin in his age-28 season in 2017. Bumgarner will be going into his age-28 season in 2018.

Of course, Bumgarner is a better, more durable and generally more accomplished pitcher than Strasburg, so an improvement on his deal would be in order. Say, something more like seven years at over $30 million per year.

While that wouldn’t match Bumgarner’s value on this winter’s market, he’d get the same going rate as Price, Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer, who are very much his peers.

However, there’s a rub.

Strasburg was only a couple of months from free agency when he inked his deal, so he had some leverage in his talks with the Nationals. Bumgarner will still be two years away from free agency if he negotiates next winter, giving him considerably less leverage.

“You’ll never get your value if you renegotiate early,” one agent told John Shea of the San Francisco Chronicle at the winter meetings, although he also admitted, “Bumgarner might be the exception because he is so unbelievable.”

As unbelievable as Bumgarner is, he’d likely have to hold off on signing and continue being himself in 2018 and 2019 to gain enough leverage to squeeze market value out of the Giants. That would require him not to break down. His track record bodes well there, but no pitcher is unbreakable. He’d be taking a chance.

Alternatively, Bumgarner and the Giants could make it easy on themselves and find the middle ground next winter.

My best guess is that would involve going back to 2013 and taking a cue from Felix Hernandez and the Seattle Mariners. When they agreed to a seven-year, $175 million extension, what they actually agreed to was a five-year, $135.5 million deal on top of money Hernandez was still owed in the final two years of his original contract of five years and $78 million. Although he signed coming off his age-26 season, his new deal wouldn’t begin until his age-29 season in 2015.

The ages won’t quite line up if Bumgarner and the Giants go this route after 2017. He’d be coming off his age-27 season and negotiating a deal that would start in his age-30 season in 2020. But since the timing and talent similarities are there, the only other big difference would be the passage of time and corresponding inflation.

So, let’s see…call it five years and $150 million, starting in 2020 and running through 2024?

That plus the money in Bumgarner’s 2018 and 2019 options would mean at least $174 million and at most $182 million over a seven-year span. That would be good money for him and also a considerable discount for the Giants. Ergo, the middle ground.

Since this is a complicated case with lots of ins, outs and what-have-yous, my best guess is obviously less than a promise. The Giants could choose to be more generous despite their leverage advantage. Or, Bumgarner could be the generous one. Or, he could choose to bet on himself in 2018 and 2019, either to gain leverage on the Giants or boost his value for free agency.

Regardless, Bumgarner is only going to get closer to some kind of big payday as time passes. When it comes, it’ll put his first payday to shame.

After Wednesday’s announcement of the 2017 Hall of Fame inductees, most of the talk is about Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, performance-enhancing drugs and the like. I wrote something on the subject if you’re not sick of it yet.

Here’s another interesting question, though: Which current MLB players would make the Hall if their careers ended today? Who, in other words, has already stacked up the statistics, awards and intangibles to punch a ticket to Cooperstown?

It’s not a scientific exercise, obviously. Voting members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America have a proven ability to confound.

Mike Piazza waited four years to get in, to cite one example, while Ivan Rodriguez slipped through on the first ballot. Two all-time great catchers, both from the steroid era with suspicion but no hard proof of illicit chemical enhancement, two different results.

There are cases like that throughout the Hall’s history, including many that aren’t clouded by PEDs and some in which worthy players (cough, Alan Trammell) never earned enshrinement.

We’ll do our best, however, to pick the most likely inductees for B/R’s All-HOF in MLB Today team. Again, we’re weighing only current stats, not future potential, so the likes of Mike Trout and Kris Bryant don’t make the cut. Neither do recently retired players, meaning the David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez debates will wait for another day.

Let’s start by examining a handful of close calls, followed by four (virtual) locks.

Major League Baseball’s reigning home run champion has a new contract, and it’s not the most expensive contract signed this winter.

Not even close.

Mark Trumbo, he of the league-leading 47 home runs in 2016, agreed to return to the Baltimore Orioles on Thursday. Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports was first with the details of his new deal:

And that’s all there is to it. According to Bob Nightengale of USA Today, there’s no opt-out in Trumbo‘s contract. He’ll be an Oriole for three more years, spanning his age-31 season to his age-33 season.

With that, we now know the terms of the 11th-largest contract signed this winter.

Trumbo‘s deal ranks just ahead of the three-year, $33 million pact that Kendrys Morales signed with the Toronto Blue Jays. The group of 10 players ahead of him is headlined by YoenisCespedes at four years and $110 million and also includes three relievers (Aroldis Chapman, Kenley Jansen and Mark Melancon), a platoon outfielder (Josh Reddick) and an oft-injured starter (Rich Hill).

OK, so it’s not the biggest injustice that Trumbo won’t be making more money than most or all of those guys. But if nothing else, he is coming in under initial projections.

The guys at MLB Trade Rumors, for example, had Trumbo pegged for $60 million over four years. That didn’t sound so unreasonable for a guy who had hit 131 homers in five major league seasons even before breaking out in 2016. Teams normally do love power, after all.

But in retrospect, the danger of Trumbo struggling to find a market existed from the very beginning.

As good as it looks on the surface, Trumbo‘s career year in 2016 was more like a career half-year. He was unstoppable with a .923 OPS and 28 homers in the first half. He was then quite stoppable in the second half with a .754 OPS and 19 homers.

This was an effect of pitchers treating Trumbo like the kind of slugger he was. As Brooks Baseball shows, the righty swinger’s first-half power was concentrated on the inside. So pitchers went from challenging him:

To pitching him almost exclusively away:

A more advanced hitter might have been able to adjust, but nobody’s ever accused Trumbo of being one of those. With too many strikeouts and not quite enough walks, his hitting has always been about power first and everything else second.

That’s one thing prospective suitors had to worry about. They also had to worry about Trumbo‘s defensive limitations.

He’s not too shabby a first baseman, but most of his experience has been in corner outfield spots. With minus-24 defensive runs saved for his career, he has been shabby there. The man himself was honest back in July, saying the outfield is “daunting” at times, per EnoSarris of FanGraphs.

Trumbo was thus prepared to head out onto the open market with a bat-only profile in which even the bat came with question marks. He then added another black mark to his profile when he rejected a $17.2 million qualifying offer from the Orioles, tying himself to draft-pick compensation.

In past offseasons, he might have found his desired payday anyway. Heck, it was just a couple years ago that Nelson Cruz, an older hitter with a similar profile, landed $58 million despite being tied to draft-pick compensation.

But at a certain point, it became apparent this offseason was different.

Reality started to sink in when Edwin Encarnacion signed with the Cleveland Indians for just $60 million over three years. That was well below the $92 million MLBTR projected for him and less than he seemingly deserved in light of his average totals (.912 OPS, 39 HR) since 2012.

More recently, Jose Bautista became the next slugger to land short of expectations when he accepted a deal from the Blue Jays that only guarantees $18 million for one year.

Certainly, this is an unusually large collection of sluggers for a single offseason. But as Dave Cameron argued at FanGraphs, there’s something fishy about any notion of there being more supply than demand:

But the way you get a big supply of free agents or players available in trade at one spot is to have a lot of teams losing a player at that spot, so if the demand was there to replace the skillset, price shouldn’t be impacted all that heavily. But what we have now is supply without demand, as there just aren’t that many teams looking to add bat-first players to their rosters this winter…

This could be teams miscalculating how much they need power. But since the smart people who run these teams tend to be good with calculations, this is more likely the effect of a larger trend.

This brings us to a reality that B/R’s Jacob Shafer wrote about recently: Power on the free-agent market may be devalued because power is suddenly everywhere in today’s game.

Trumbo wasn’t the only one launching bombs in 2016. Pretty much everyone was. There were more home runs per game last year than every year in baseball history except 2000. In an environment like this one, power hitters aren’t such a rare commodity.

It all adds up to a tough break for Trumbo and a solid deal for the Orioles. And one they needed to make, to boot.

The Orioles won 89 games and nabbed a wild-card spot in 2016 in large part thanks to an offense that clubbed an MLB-high 253 home runs. With Trumbo back in the fold, they once again have a shot to ride a wave of home runs to October.

In lieu of the contract he may have been hoping for, maybe that’ll do as a consolation prize for Trumbo.

According to Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports, the three-year deal is for $37.5 million. ESPN’s Jim Bowden reported Trumbo has a limited no-trade clause for seven teams and incentivized, tiered bonuses dependent on how many times he wins the Silver Slugger award.

Trumbo, 31, had a career year for the Orioles in 2016, hitting .256 with 47 home runs—the most in the major leagues—and 108 RBI. His home run and RBI totals were both career highs.

While Trumbo flashed excellent power earlier in his career—from 2011 to 2013, he hit 95 home runs with 282 RBI for the Los Angeles Angels—he established himself as one of baseball’s most dangerous power hitters last season.

His surge in production left him as one of the most appealing free agents on the market for teams looking to add a big bopper to the middle of their lineups. That made Baltimore’s chances of retaining him uncertain, though Trumbo seemed inclined to return to the Orioles following the season.

“I love it here,” he told Steve Melewski of MASN after the team’s Wild Card Game loss to the Toronto Blue Jays. “Had a great time and I’m sure we’ll talk at some point. Who wouldn’t (want to come back)? It has been an absolute blast this year.”

The Orioles wanted him back just as much and now will be hoping that Trumbo’s power numbers were his new norm and not an outlier.

If Trumbo doesn’t knock the ball out of the park, his value wanes. He’s a below-average fielder, and he’s unlikely to provide a great batting average or on-base percentage. Baltimore bet big money that Trumbo’s power surge will continue in 2017.

The 28-year-old has been unable to maintain the level of play that made him one of baseball’s best young arms out of the bullpen upon his arrival to the majors.

During his second season in 2010 as a 22-year-old, Feliz posted a 2.73 ERA and 40 saves, earning his first and only All-Star selection. The following year would see him rack up another 32 saves as he was Texas’ closer during its run of two consecutive American League championships.

After undergoing Tommy John surgery in August 2012, Feliz was limited to just six games in 2013 before a strong return the following year. In 2014, he posted a 1.99 ERA in 30 appearances with 13 saves.

Feliz saw his ERA swell to 6.38 in 2015 with the Rangers and Tigers as a setup man in what was by far his worst season in the majors. But he did manage to bounce back fairly well last year, cutting his ERA to 3.52 as a late-inning option in Pittsburgh.

Now in Milwaukee, Feliz will have an opportunity to become the team’s go-to closer. In 2016, the Brewers had inconsistencies at that spot, as Jeremy Jeffress and Tyler Thornburg combined for 40 saves.

However, the Brewers blew 22 save opportunities, which was tied for eighth-most in the majors. In an attempt to revamp their situation, they dealtJeffressat the trade deadline to the Rangers as a part of the Jonathan Lucroy deal and tradedThornburgto the Boston Red Sox during the winter meetings.

The Miami Marlins reached an agreement Thursday to acquire starting pitcher Dan Straily in a trade with the Cincinnati Reds in return for a package headlined by pitching prospects Luis Castillo and Austin Brice.

The Reds confirmed they had moved Straily in exchange for Castillo and Brice and outfielder Isaiah White. Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports first reported the trade was close.

Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports provided further details about the Reds’ plan for the pitchers:

Straily, a former promising prospect in the Oakland Athletics organization, is coming off his best MLB season to date with the Reds in 2016. The right-hander posted a 3.76 ERA and 1.19 WHIP with 162 strikeouts in 191.1 innings across 34 appearances, including 31 starts.

The 28-year-old Marshall product enjoyed initial success with the A’s, accumulating an ERA slightly under 4.00 across his first two seasons. His numbers dropped off in a major way with Oakland and the Chicago Cubs in 2014, however, and he struggled again with the Houston Astros the following year.

Surprisingly, he managed to get his career back on track despite playing his home games in the bandbox known as Great American Ball Park. The Reds’ home stadium ranked fourth in baseball in terms of home runs per game last year, per ESPN.com.

While Straily wasn’t immune to the park factors, giving up 31 homers, his splits were interesting. He was much better at home, finishing with a 2.90 ERA and 13 home runs allowed, compared to a 4.70 ERA and 18 home runs allowed on the road in the same number of outings.

Zach Buchanan of the Cincinnati Enquirer passed along comments from the veteran starter last September about his mindset when it comes to giving up the long ball.

“I don’t go to work every fifth day and think, ‘Oh, let’s try not to give up home runs today,'” Straily said. “When I get through a game and there are no home runs, it’s like, ‘Sweet.’ But some of those days when I do give up home runs, that’s usually all the runs I give up. I’d rather do that than give up back-to-back doubles.”

The advanced numbers do provide some cause for concern. His 3.76 ERA last season was a career best, but his xFIP checked in at 5.02, per FanGraphs. That’s mostly due to his low batting average on balls in play (.239) and high left-on-base percentage (81.2).

Ultimately, the Marlins are betting their more spacious stadium can rectify Straily’s problems with the home run. Marlins Park ranked 26th in home runs per game in 2016. But that alone doesn’t mean he’ll start posting No. 1 or No. 2 starter numbers.

That’s what Miami is likely hoping for following the trade, though. It will enter the new season without a clear-cut ace following the death of Jose Fernandez in September. So the team will look to fill the void in the aggregate.

Straily is set to join a rotation that also features Wei-Yin Chen, Tom Koehler and Edinson Volquez. The fifth spot will probably get decided during spring training, with Jeff Locke looming as the early favorite. It has the makings of a solid, albeit far from star-studded, group.

Meanwhile, the Reds receive a pair of potential impact pitchers in the deal. MLB.com ranked Castillo fifth and Brice ninth in the Marlins’ prospect pool before the trade.

Castillo, 24, finished with a 2.26 ERA across stops at two levels of the minors last year. Brice, 24, was also impressive with a 2.74 ERA during stints in Double-A and Triple-A. While his first cup of coffee in the majors resulted in a 7.07 ERA, his WHIP was 1.00, and he struck out 14 batters in 14 innings.

Jennifer Steinbrenner Swindal, a New York Yankees general partner and the daughter of longtime team owner George Steinbrenner, stated Wednesday the family still has no plans to sell the organization.

Dan Martin of the New York Post passed along comments Swindal made during a team charitable event called “Winter Warm-up” for the elderly. She said the family’s long-term outlook hasn’t changed since her father’s death in 2010.

“We’re all in,” she said. “I hope we own the team for eternity. You never know what life will bring, but we’re in it for the long haul.”

Swindal noted her son, Steve Swindal Jr., has taken on a role in baseball operations to help set the stage for a smooth transition to the next generation. She also praised Hal Steinbrenner, her brother and the team’s principal owner, for his job handling the franchise in recent years.

“Initially, we were trying to figure out how we were all going to handle things and when my father got sick, all four of us [siblings] went to work,” she said. “Hal has been a leader and he’s been great.”

Although questions are raised about a potential sale on seemingly an annual basis, the remarks echo those made by Hal Steinbrenner last spring training. He told Wallace Matthews of ESPN.com his father would be happy with how the family has stuck together to make things work.

“This is a family business and we’re all involved,” Steinbrenner said. “We all love being a part of this. We all know our dad wanted us to be a part of us, and we all know he’s watching down on us and happy that we’re all a part of it. Believe it or not, to us, that’s a big deal. The idea is, let’s keep it going.”

A lot is made about the Yankees’ lack of marquee free-agent signings since the death of George Steinbrenner. The inclusion of a luxury tax paired with having to pay off massive contracts has forced the team to avoid those major offseason splashes for the most part, though.

Furthermore, New York ranks second in payroll average over the past three years, according to the Baseball Cube. The Bronx Bombers still rank first in that category over the past 10 and 15 years.

Yankees general manager Brian Cashman expressed optimism the front office would have more flexibility in 2018 as contracts start coming off the books, per Randy Miller of NJ Advance Media:

Well, this is my hope: First and foremost, as you see we’re transitioning from contracts that we vested heavily in and it did pay off for us in ’09 (with a World Series championship). So at the end of the day we are going to be in a position to do a number of things, and maybe we can turn the clock back to be big-game hunters that we have been accustomed to being.

The current generation of Steinbrenners have been hamstrung by the team’s financial situation after working hard to chase down the 2009 title. But the fanbase will want them to become high-end buyers once again next winter with superstar outfielder Bryce Harper among the possible free agents.

What’s about to proceed is a slideshow about outfielders to watch that won’t mention Mike Trout.

It sounds blasphemous, but there’s a method at work here.

The idea is to focus on 10 outfielders who will be worth monitoring during 2017 spring training. What they have in common is not that they’re slam-dunk superstars but that they have questions to answer.

Some must show they’re ready to be healthy and productive in this upcoming season after failing to be one or both in 2016. Others must show they’re ready to turn their unproven talent into proven talent. Others must show they’re ready to do jobs they may not be cut out for.